Theological Frontiers: Implications for Bioethics

Abstract

Fortunately, I have been asked to concentrate on ‘the current frontiers of theology’ — or at least that is how I will interpret my assigned title. On this matter I have some reasonable or at least reasoned opinions, though everyone’s ‘frontiers’ are his own and will be disputed by the next theologian called upon. I shall try — and here I may not do so well — to relate these theological frontiers, as I view them, to issues in bioethics. One assumption behind my title, if I understand it aright, is that theology changes as well as do biology, genetics, and medicine. (Often it is assumed that theology and ethics, deriving from old traditions, remain stable and that it is in science, technology, and medicine that important changes reside.) Further, it seems assumed that these changes within theology and theological ethics will affect the relation of theology to bioethics as much as will developments in the theories and practices of the relevant scientific and medical disciplines. Even though these assumptions seem relatively obvious, frequently they are overlooked. Actually, however, that point being granted, I will suggest that the most fundamental ‘frontier’ of theology (and this is part of the image of a frontier) arises in extra-theological areas; that is, it appears to or confronts theology not as a result of its own labors but from outside, from its wider historical and cultural context.